Over the past decade, the popularity of digital photography has continued to grow exponentially as digital cameras have become widespread, whether as stand alone devices or integrated with other devices, such as camera phones. At the same time, technology developments have made it easier to share photographs, for example, by emailing digital photographs, posting digital photographs on personal webpages, or posting digital photographs on photo-sharing websites. As a result, individuals now have access to millions of photographs. While the general availability of photographs provides exciting opportunities, it is difficult for users to sort through such vast numbers of images. Current approaches for searching through images, such as tagging images with keywords, often does not provide a satisfactory user experience. Additionally, current approaches for photograph sharing are fairly dry. Photographs may be sent to a person (e.g., via email) or a site (e.g., a personal webpage or photo-sharing website) and viewed. It is currently possible for users to create more immersive experiences, such as by using tools to create slideshows of images. However, the result still tends to be linear (i.e., progression from one image to another) and in large files that are hard to share.
Fairly recently, a technique has been proposed for generating three-dimensional (3D) environments from two-dimensional (2D) images, such as photographs, and for positioning each of the photographs within the 3D environment. The resulting 3D environment may then be navigated, allowing users to view a collection of images using the 3D environment to provide spatial context. While this technique provides a more immersive user experience, the size of a particular 3D environment may make it difficult to share. Additionally, the 3D environment may become cluttered if an excessive number of images are included.